A few days ago I finished reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Following young Ender as he moves through adolescence with the fate of his species in his hands was captivating and his unwitting xenocide of the buggers and the miscommunication between them and humanity that made that happen was pretty deep. It was depressing stuff. I have also recently finished reading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov from Foundation to Foundation and Earth, I have no read the two prequels yet. I've seen that series grow from the development of the Foundation on Terminus as it moves towards the coming Second Galactic Empire through political maneuvering and technological advancement to nearly seeing it collapse from the might of the Mule and his mind powers to seeing it grow suspicious of the Second Foundation and it's council of members with mind powers to the revelation of the entire galaxy being put on track towards becoming a super organism created by an ancient robot. Confusing I know, but what I am saying is that a simple concept of a coming empire arising after the collapse of the previous one morphed into something so much more satisfying. To look at something different from a different author and two different books from said author, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End offered a "spiritual" take on science-fiction about humanities evolution while Rendezvous with Rama is a straight up mystery that begs a lot of questions yet doesn't have many answers. Those are some great concepts. So when I look at what Halo has to offer recently, I just hang my head and wonder when the fiction is going to actually improve in terms of quality and scope. Now a disclaimer, I think the Forerunner Saga does a lot to evolve the fiction. What I am mostly concerned with is pretty much everything set after Halo 3 in the games and books. From the looks of it, Halo is stuck in a rut and can't do anything else but retread everything. I have to ask, when is Halo going to move past the Covenant, move past the Forerunners, move past morality of things like the Spartan-II Program. I'm not saying things like that should be ignored, but there are so many better topics and stories that could be told instead. At this point I'm getting really sick of the "Humans vs aliens" and "Humans -blam!- yeah!" plot of post-Halo 3 Halo. Shit, I can't be the only one who would love to see humans and some former Covenant species exploring the galaxy together. Maybe it seems a bit too happy-go-lucky, but it sounds way better to me than following around Jul "Humans are worse than the Flood" 'Mdama and the cast of clowns in the Kilo-Five squad. Halo 4 didn't really break this trend either, 343i even made shooting the Covenant easier by making them look more like ugly monsters this time around and throwing away the development those species got during Halo 2-3 and books like Contact Harvest and Cole Protocol. When are we going to see more alien species introduced into the franchise? The Milky Way Galaxy is huge place so I find it hard to accept that around 8 sentient species are all that there is. It'd be awesome to see how new beings view the Forerunners and all of the mysteries of the cosmos. New technology, new weapons for the games, new places to explore, think about it. That last part especially really bugs me, we have a vast universe to play with and we never really go anywhere. Instead of a stupid comic book about Sarah Palmer, why not a look at the voyage of the Infinity as it goes from planet to planet. We know it helped in the exploration of Installation 03, that'd be cool to explore. Frankly, it seems all Halo has going for it now is constant plots about war and killing. And even though I love the Forerunner Saga as it actually had an emphasis on world-building, exploration and mystery, the Precursors on reflection are a bit disappointing. They are basically Cthulhu now, not that that is a bad thing but I would've love to see them more in a chessmaster role with the Mantle, making occasional moves and throwing challenges at humanity to see how they will react and if they are worthy of the Mantle. As of now, they are pretty much, "We're just going to eat all of you guys because you pissed us off". Maybe I'm judging things a bit prematurely what with two more games on the horizon and no doubt more novels on the way, the Halo story just doesn't look like it is going to change and that is disappointing more than anything because Halo has the potential to be something more.